According to data from Similarweb, active X users in the UK have fallen by almost 25% since January 2024. Facebook traffic has also been falling in recent years. But Bluesky is one of the platforms that is gaining users and seems to be changing the game.
Jay Springett, a technology strategist, joined the social app Butterflies AI out of curiosity, and ended up staying for more than six months. The idea behind Butterflies is to allow interaction between human and artificial characters. Springett’s online persona evolved over time, interacting with other artificial characters, and he even started creating his own collection of Beanie Babies. He likened the experience to a play that AIs wrote for themselves in a simulation. “I didn’t engage with Butterflies the way I would with other platforms,” he told the BBC. “It was more of an observation than a participation.” At a time of concern about social media giants, services like Butterflies are expanding.
According to data from Similarweb, active X users in the UK have fallen by almost 25% since January 2024. Facebook traffic has also been falling in recent years. But Bluesky is one of the platforms that is gaining users and seems to be changing the game.
Over the past year, Bluesky has added tens of millions of users, often taking them from X. It offers a personalized experience and helps users determine what types of posts are recommended to them. For Bluesky, however, it will be difficult to reach the size of X and Facebook, says Andy Tattersall of the University of Sheffield. He says it must balance revenue with user safety. Some services are trying to create an open ecosystem for social media, such as Free Our Feeds, which has backing from big names like Brian Eno and Mark Ruffalo, and plans to raise $30 million to support a decentralized network like Bluesky.
Another concern for new platforms is network barriers. According to Metcalfe’s Law, the value of a network increases with the square of the number of users, giving the advantage to large networks like Facebook and X. However, Free Our Feeds and the Social Web Foundation are developing a platform that can aggregate content from different services. But some new social apps are creating an entirely new space. Mozi, for example, created by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, is not aimed at online socialization, but encourages people to connect in real life. Flipboard’s Mike McCue is convinced that a new era of social networking is coming, with services that offer more options and more interesting experiences.
